Dan hadn't seen any carriages like that here in Westwood. He was sure there were some. The big shots here were just as rich as the ones in the Valley, probably richer. But most of them didn't get rich by being dumb. They weren't showing off what they owned, not when King Zev ruled this place now instead of their pet City Council.
Sergeant Chuck came up. He had two juicy-looking drum-sticks in his mess kit. A sergeant didn't need to butter up the cooks the way ordinary soldiers did. A cook who got in trouble with a sergeant would pay for it.
“What's happening, Dan?” Chuck asked.
'“Not much, Sergeant.” Dan stood up so Chuck could sit down on the bench. The sergeant did. Dan didn't have to give up his place-nothing in the rules said he did, anyhow. But Chuck would have remembered if he didn't. Sergeants had long memories, too.
“How's that chick at the traders' house?” Chuck grinned as he asked the question. That meant he knew Dan liked Liz. A sergeant who was worth his pay kept track of what was going on with his men.
“She's okay. She's kind of weird, though,” Dan said.
“Well, Westside chicks are supposed to be that way,” Chuck said. That was an article of faith among Valley men. The Westsiders thought people from the Valley were a bunch of hicks, but what did they know?
“Not weird like that. Not weird weird.” Dan wondered if he was making any sense at all. Chuck nodded, so maybe he was. He went on, “I mean, she's into history, if you can dig that.”
“History?” Chuck gnawed the meat off one of those drumsticks. Then he shook his head. After he swallowed the fried chicken, he said, “Yeah, that's pretty freaky, all right. How'd you find out?”
“She was coming back from the UCLA fancy library. I asked her what she was doing, and that's what she told me,” Dan said.
Chuck 's eyes narrowed. So did his mouth. “Could be a cover for something else, something nastier.”
“I thought so, too,” Dan answered. “But she really does know stuff about Russians and things, and she doesn't know much about guns. If they were trying to get stuff out of the library, wouldn't they have picked somebody who does?”
“We would-that's for sure,” Chuck said. “The Westsiders, though… they're kinda far-out, so who knows for sure?” He paused. “Russians, eh? How does she know about Russians?”
“I'm not quite sure,” Dan admitted. “The way she made it sound, traders hear stuff ordinary people don't. Do you think that's true?”
Chuck scratched his head. “Don't know for sure. I guess it could be. They travel more than most people do. that's for sure.” He cocked his head to one side, studying Dan. “I bet you've been trying like anything to find out what she does know.”
“Well… yeah.” Dan was embarrassed. He didn't think he'd done anything wrong, but he didn't want his private likes and dislikes to get in the way of his duty, either.
“Don't sweat it, man,” Chuck said, understanding his tone. “If you want to like her, you can like her. Plenty of our guys have got Westside girlfriends for themselves. Long as you remember you're a Valley soldier, everything's cool.”
“You know I wouldn't do anything else!” Dan exclaimed.
“Sure, sure.” Chuck nodded. “I'd really hassle you if I had anything to worry about there.” He paused for a bite of bread. “She say anything about what's going on south of the Santa Monica Freeway line?”
“No, Sergeant.” Dan answered truthfully. “What is going on south of the freeway, anyhow?”
“Beats me.” Chuck said. “But we can't push any farther- the Westsiders are still hanging tough down there. If they make
The Valley-Westside War J 11
a deal with Speedro… Well, that could cause everybody a lot of trouble.”
“Could cause the Westside a lot of trouble,” Dan said. “If they let Speedro's soldiers in to fight us, how do they chase 'em out again afterwards?”
“Sounds like the $64,000 question to me,”' Chuck said. “But I've heard some talk about it, so I wondered if your girlfriend said anything.”
“She's not my girlfriend,” Dan said, so sorrowfully that the sergeant laughed. Ears hot, Dan changed the subject: “The $64,000 question… People say it, but can you imagine anybody who's really got that much money?”
“I bet the king does,” Chuck said. After a moment's thought, Dan nodded. That might be true. Of course, the king collected taxes from all over the Valley. Chuck added, “I wonder why we say it. And why 864,000? Why not $65,000-or 875,000?”
“Beats me,” Dan said. “Do you want me to see ii I can find out what Liz knows about whatever's happening down south?”
“Sure. Maybe the Russians will tell her all about it.” Chuck laughed loudly at his own wit. Dan laughed, too. When a sergeant made a joke, any common soldier who knew what was good for him thought it was funny.
Chuck dug into his sauerkraut. He ate every bit that the cook had given him, and he didn't complain or make faces, no matter how bad the pickled cabbage tasted. In his own way, he was setting an example for the men under him. If Dan had noticed he was setting an example…
But Dan 's mind was on other things. He did his best not to grin from ear to ear. Now he had another excuse to hang around Liz, to see what she knew, and to see if he could get her to like him. He couldn't have been happier. He didn't even stop to ask himself how happy she'd be.
“How do I get rid of this guy, Mom?” Liz asked. “This side of shooting him, I mean. He hasn't been any bad trouble, but he sticks like glue.”
Her mother was plucking a chicken. No, no neatly wrapped plastic-covered packages in the butcher's shop at the supermarket, not in this alternate. If you wanted meat, you had to deal with it yourself. Mom paused for a moment. “As long as he's not bad trouble, why worry about it?”
“Because he sticks like glue.” Liz wondered why Mom couldn't see how obvious that was. “He likes me, and I don't like him-for sure not that way. He doesn't know much, and most of what he thinks he knows is wrong, and he doesn't take enough baths, either. And he thinks I'm some kind of spy or something.”
“Nobody's perfect,” Mom observed. The look Liz sent her said she wasn't perfect herself-not even close. For a wonder, Mom noticed. She stopped plucking pinfeathers and added, “Now you see why we've got all these rules against getting involved with people from the alternates.”
“Sure.” Liz had long since figured that out. She threw her hands in the air. “But what we really need are rules to keep people from the alternates from wanting to get involved with us.”
Her mother smiled, which made Liz want to throw the mostly plucked chicken out the window. She needed sympathy, and what was Mom doing? Laughing at her! “If you could put on a mask that made you ugly and if you talked like an idiot, that might do the trick,” her mother said. “Hand me the cumin there, would you?”
Liz did, but doing it only made her angrier. For one thing, Mom seemed to think getting the chicken ready for dinner was more important than the way Dan kept bothering her. For another, she was tired of cumin and cilantro. The locals used them in everything this side of apple pie, and her mother naturally cooked the way people here did. (Apples were rare, imported luxuries in this Southern California. The trees grew fine, but they needed frost to make fruit. Even in the Valley, where it got colder than it did on the Westside, freezes didn't come every year-or every other year, either.)